I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

We live in a capitalist system; anyone who believes they are above this system or purer than this system, even while shopping at the cute organic market across the street or taking a hiking vacation to Guatemala, is certifiable.

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

When I moved to New York, the reputation just followed me, and I am regularly invited to play in home games, by writers in particular, though finance folk also invite me on occasion.